April 1, 2008
Arming nomads
A few pages into Michael Asher's book Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure
As governor-general [of Sudan], he declared war on the slave trade. He closed slave markets, halted caravans and had slave-merchants publicly hanged. When the slave-traders in the Bahr-al-Ghazal region revolted, he unleashed the cattle-nomads of the steppes against them.
Sound familiar? A central power in Khartoum arms nomad militias to fight a proxy war in a remote region of Sudan.
Just remember the Brits did it first. (We also invented the concentration camp during the Boer War in South Africa. Makes you proud.)
Posted by aheavens at April 1, 2008 11:02 AM
Comments
Hey Andrew,
Just wanted to recommend the Wedding of Zein by Al-Tayeb Saleh, its one of my favourite books and will give you a good insight into Sudanese culture. The only thing is the book is set in the 1970s and you will find much of the culture has changed by the Ingaz Islamic revoultion . You might find Season of Immigration to the North good(it was voted into the best 50 books of the 20th century) but I didnt understand what Al-Tayeb Saleh was getting at in the book.
Al-Hrafish by Nagib Mahfouz is definitely my favourite from him, the book keeps you captivated from beginning to end.
By the way, where are you getting all these books from, I thought there wasnt any bookshops in Sudan?
Posted by: amal at April 1, 2008 12:57 PM
Thanks very much for that Amal - I'll try to get all three of them. You're right. Books are very difficult to get here. The easiest way is to wait for a visitor and ask them to bring out an Amazon order - unless you have good contacts with an embassy official who will let you use their diplomatic address.
Posted by: andrew at April 1, 2008 1:04 PM
And don't forget that other charming British invention, the Dum Dum bullet. But then again, you were also one of the first nations to abolish slavery (and enforce that abolition, viz. Gordon's actions in Sudan).
Posted by: Michael at April 2, 2008 4:31 AM